"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." (Abraham Lincoln)

You can tell a lot about a town by its cemeteries. You can tell a lot about its history by who lies buried within its bounds. You can also tell a lot about the character of a people by how they remember and tend their dead. Cemeteries hold our memories, quiet and unmoving weft to balance the warp of our ever forward driving momentum. Cemeteries root us in our own evolution, reminding us of who we once were, and the choice ever facing us as a community of whom we wish to become in the future. They're good touch-stones for the health of a community. They can also hold some intriguing surprises. Take Beacon, for instance. Beacon is a city of secrets. Just walking through her streets, chatting with her artists, shopping in the various stores and galleries, visiting DIA, one would never guess how deeply entwined Beacon has been in the march of our nation toward independence and freedom. She has been though and the clues are there, most especially in her cemeteries. One cemetery that doesn't get anywhere nearly the attention it deserves is the Afro-American Union Cemetery on Oak Street and Verplanck. To talk about this cemetery, it's necessary to first introduce one of Beacon's most interesting historical personages: James F. Brown. Brown is a fascinating man. Born a slave in Maryland in 1793, he took freedom into his own hands, fleeing North in 1827 when his then owner, Susan Williams, refused him the right to buy his own freedom (something that had been promised him by her father). Brown eventually ended up in New York working for the Verplanck family. His employers helped him maintain and legally buy his freedom when his former owner tracked him down. He remained with the family as the head gardener at Mount Gulian estate in Beacon, eventually buying his wife's freedom, purchasing a home, and even voting for the first time in 1837. His story is in itself a fascinating one and Brown was the subject of a recent book "Freedom's Gardener" by historian Myra B. Young Armstead. Best of all he kept a regular diary, in which he recorded daily happenings in his life. This diary has proven a goldmine for historians. A man of character, as the minutiae of his story show, he knew the value of tending to his community's dead. In 1851 (in conjunction with Samuel Sampson, Edward Bush, Christian Reynolds, and Samuel Gomer) he bought what is now the Afro-American Union Cemetery. At the time, it was nothing more than a small portion of land located in and purchased from the local Methodist Cemetery, originally founded in 1819. Now, in 2014, there are no extant gravestones in the Afro-American Union Cemetery, but this is a fairly new development. We know that at one point after it was established as a separate cemetery, there were headstones including at least one for Civil War veteran Spenser DeFreese. That name may not be well known in Beacon today, but at one point in Beacon's history, DeFreese was a hero. There were many black soldiers in the Union army - roughly 10% of Union forces from 1862 onward. They faced discrimination, prejudice, and a much greater chance of cruelty and abuse if captured by the Confederate army, yet they stepped up, stepped forward and enlisted in such great numbers that in 1863 Lincoln's government established the "Bureau of Colored Troops" to manage the growing numbers of black recruits (even within the Union, having black men armed and trained for combat was, at that time, a very controversial thing). Former slave, firebrand, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass urged men to enlist as a guarantee of full citizenship when the war was over and in fact contributed two sons to the Union's war effort. While the aforementioned James Brown did not enlist, many a young black man in Beacon did. At least one was buried with full honors in Fairview Cemetery, also in Beacon and we know that there are several more in the now unmarked graves at the Afro-American Union Cemetery. See what secrets our cemeteries hold? Cemeteries are more than just historical landmarks. They are treasure troves of knowledge. They hold the secrets of who and what a community is: all the ground over which its generations have walked. Beacon Cemetery Committee, a sub-division of the Beacon Historical Society is dedicated to preserving not just the Afro-American Union Cemetery, but all the cemeteries in Beacon. Current projects include eventually replacing the military headstone for Spenser DeFreese, a slow and laborious process filled with a great deal of governmental paperwork. No one knows when the original headstones disappeared from the cemetery, but raising a stone for one of Beacon's military heroes is a good place to begin its restoration. You can be part of that restoration too. The Cemetery Committee meets the last Thursday of each month at the Howland Public Library. Come and help preserve Beacon's historic landscape. For more information visit http://beaconcemeterytrail.wordpress.com/

This is some of the most powerful civic ancestor work that I've ever encountered. "Sometimes you need to know that you are doing something which is important, that you are not just a piece of dust in this universe. This work connects us to our past. It's like an anchor which helps us to stay in place even during a storm."I think it is immensely sacred and holy work that these volunteers are doing.

My newest book 'Honoring the Ancestors: A Basic Guide" is now available here. In a few days it'll be available on amazon as well. This is a step by step guide to developing and maintaining a powerful ancestor practice. It's the book I'm asked for the most and now, finally, I've written it. Check it out, folks.

Special Offer:I will be doing a one time sale of ten copies, personalized and signed with the prayer card of your choice for $25 plus $5 S&H. If you are interested, please contact me at krasskova at gmail.com.

People ask me a lot what they can do to expand their ancestor practices. Hell, I ask myself the same question all the time! Once those connections start happening, it's easy to become very enthusiastic for the overall process and this is a good thing. So it's good and natural to wonder how you can expand what you're doing.

I want to do a quick and dirty breakdown of ancestor practices.

1. firstly, there's the personal, domestic cultus: making offerings, maintaining a shrine, cooking for the dead, maybe studying genealogy. Things like showing filial piety by visiting graves, telling stories to your kids about their ancestors, encouraging ancestor awareness - all practices that increase your connection to your own personal dead, and which help you to foster and further your connections there.

2. But then there's this other, civic component, at least I think so, that isn't so much about your own ancestors, but about caring for your community's dead.

It makes sense that we forget about this: it's not like we live in a culture that has state supported ancestor or hero cultus. I didn't think anything of this at all until earlier this year. I was taking a student of mine to one of the local cemeteries to introduce her and to teach her the correct protocol for engaging with a cemetery and its dead. As she was walking around, this older guy comes scurrying over. He is chatty and asks me if I'm looking for anyone in particular. When I said i just liked to pay my general respects and wanted to show my friend the cemetery he got excited and asked if i was part of the local cemetery association.

Well, at that point, I was getting the sort of psychic poke from my ancestors that says "you may not be now, but you will be soon" lol. I got all the information from him and found out that the local historical society has a sub-committee dedicated to maintaining the local cemeteries, fixing headstones, holding educational events and tours, and otherwise increasing local knowledge about the many cemeteries in my area as well as making sure that they're properly cared for. I'd lived in my little town for years but hadn't any inkling that this existed.

I started attending the monthly meetings and took on a couple of little projects and …felt my own ancestors responding positively. It's not as though any of the work I have slowly started to do with the cemetery committee benefits them directly but they very clearly approve. It took me awhile to parse out why and the closest I can describe it is that it's the civic equivalent of filial piety and that this is a necessary component of ongoing ancestor work.

What's nice about this is that you don't' have to be a medium to do this work really, really well and for those who may be struggling with their personal ancestor work (it can take some time when there are family issues and what family doesn't have issues?), this can be a really good way to engage.

So I plod along with this doing what I can. I will probably be talking about it here from time to time. It's another aspect of ancestor work.

A couple of weeks ago, Mary Beth asked some very insightful questions on my blog about ancestor work. I 've been holding onto them until the Polytheist Leadership Conference was finished and I wanted to take the time to answer them in depth. Today is the first chance I've had to do so. Mary Beth asks: "Knowing you all are extremely busy right about now, sometime in the future, would you be willing to blog about how you honor your ancestors of lineage(spiritual and artistic), and if it's not uncomfortable, share an idea or picture of what a shrine would be?

Also, as an artist, do you have a conscious, intentional relationship with your creative/artistic daemon, or do you feel that doing the work is enough? What might such a practice look like?" Those are really good questions and I had to sit back when I first read them and think long and hard. I've never actually talked about this part of my practice in any depth with anyone and to be fair, it's something that I myself am still developing. My ancestor practice is divided into three parts: blood and adoptive ancestors, spiritual lineage, artistic lineage. This latter group have become more and more important over the past couple of years as I've resolved much of the pain locked up in my retirement from ballet and as I've begun to paint and explore photography. I also had a series of powerful epiphanies last year where I realized how much i owed many of the dancers I include in my artistic lineage. It's really because of them that I not only survived, escaped a very stultifying home, but also that I gained the groundwork as a devotional polytheist. I learned the nuts and bolts of devotion and how to endure the ongoing process of transformation inherent in spiritual work. For me, that is not at all insignificant. So, how do I integrate all of this into my regular ancestor practice? Well, with both my spiritual and my artistic lineages, I began by giving them each special sections of my ancestor shrine (which takes up the better part of a room in my home). For my spiritual lineage, I put photos of my deceased elders, images representing those too far back in the line to have photographs, this representing priestcraft, divinatory arts, shamanism. I have, for one of the traditions into which i've been initiated, my lineage written out and this I recite with prayers daily. I also make regular offerings. For the artistic shrine, I honor two groups of people: ballet dancers who inspired me when I danced, and the operatic castrati. For the latter group, I have a period lithograph, and a couple of photocopied paintings of famous Castrati (no photos exist, it was too early. The first of my artistic lineage to be photographed in her prime was Fanny Cerrito, who was dancing at the height of her career when the daguerreotype was introduced). For my dancers it's a bit different. I began with Anna Pavlova. She was the reason I began to dance, and a bio of her life was probably the most influential book on me ever. It kindled my passion for ballet. I tracked down original post cards from Imperial Russia with images of her dancing. These run between $20 and $150 (though a signed one can be in the thousands. Mine are not signed) on today's market. They were put out as publicity images by the Maryinsky theatre. I have ballet ephemera (old programs, a card someone wrote to her niece talking about seeing Pavlova dance, etc) and i had these all nicely framed and hung by that part of my shrine. Then I turned to the second dancer who dramatically inspired me: Olga Spessivtseva (sometimes simplified to Spessiva). I did the same in terms of finding original images but here I coiled do one better. She is buried about 45 minutes away from where I live so I and a friend made a pilgrimage there two years ago (I need to go back). It took us awhile to find the Russian Orthodox cemetery and longer to locate her grave, but we did and left offerings and later installed a memorial to her on my shrine. Ballet is a lineage art, the tradition, choreographies, customs, and protocols are all passed down dancer to dancer, teacher to student. To honor them, as well as to respect my own small place in that lineage meant that I ought to be honoring their predecessors. I began seeking out images for the dancers that inspired Pavlova and Spessivtseva, most notably Marie Taglioni (I have a newspaper clipping advertising her performances from early 1800s). I added images for Pierina Legnani, who revolutionized ballet technique, Mathilda Kchessinskaya, Olga Preobrajenska, several lithographs of Fanny Essler, Carlotta Grisi, Fanny Cerrito. I know my way around this lineage. When i watch a ballet being performed, I'm not just paying attention to the ballerina dancing a particular role *now*, i'm mentally placing her in a line of all the dancers to have performed that role back to the time the ballet was choreographed. When I recently saw "Sleeping Beauty" danced by the NYCB, I enjoyed the bluebird variation and connected that in my mind to Enrico Cecchetti, the first to perform it when the ballet was created, and that tied me to Pavlova and Spessivtseva and indeed a whole generation of Imperial dancers, because he became a noted ballet master, and that tied me to the ballet russe for the same reason, which led to Balanchine who came from the Imperial school through the ballet russe and to my teacher and first director who trained as Balanchine's school….to me. That framework and understanding is first and foremost the basis for my interaction. Knowing my ballet history too allows me to pinpoint with absolute specificity how each of these women changed the face of their art. I honor male dancers more obliquely only because while working in the field, it was specifically female dancers - being one myself-- from whom i drew the most inspiration and into whose roles I hoped to step. For some of of the 18th and early 19th dancers, like La Camargo (who shorted her skirts to show the ankles and took the high heels off her shoes so she could showcase her jumps and intricate footwork; in the late 1800s Virginia Zucchi would repeat this with the Russian ballet, giving us the short ballet skirt that is now de rigieur) there weren't even really lithographs available. I had to look long and hard for an authentic image, rather than a photocopy of Camargo. (photocopies are ok, but I really wanted something more authentic). I finally hit gold when I discovered tobacco cards. Up through the 1930s, many tobacco companies included novelty cards in their tobacco packs. A German company named Garbaty came out with a line of "Famous Dancers," which included Marie Camargo and other very, very early ballet stars. They seem to only showcase female dancers, but they have a broad array, including a drawing of an Etruscan dancer, a Greek dancer, an ancient Egyptian dancer which allows me to include representations for the ancient side of the linage on my shrine too. I did have to stop and think where to put some of these images because so much dance goes back to religious expression and ritual that I wondered if they could rightly be included in my spiritual lineage shrine, but then I figured that the modern dancers, while many like Preobrajenska, Pavlova, Spessivtseva to name a few, thought of their work as a spiritual vocation, just as many likely did not and best to give them their own space. Here's one of my recent acquisitions, a photo card taken prior to 1910 (it had to be taken before Pavlova left the Maryinsky), showing her in "Swan Lake". I haven't looked up yet who is partnering her. The card, much to my chagrin, only reads 'anna pavlova with her partner"!

Here below are a few of the Garbaty tobacco cards. Pictured here are top row left to right: Carlotta Grisi in "La Peri,", Marie Taglioni in "La Sylphide" (Taglioni's style came to define an entire genre of romantic ballet), bottom left to right: La Camargo, Olga Spessivtseva (possibly in "la Nuit,").

(I like the images, but they aren't necessary for this work. I just really like them and they help me connect better just like having a bit of oh i don't know, rabbit fur might help one connect to the spirit of rabbit more effectively. This is a personal thing. If i were more aural, I might play ballet music for them (I do this for the castrati i honor). I tend toward the kinetic and visual though so for me, having authentic images, connects me to that time and place and that point in ballet lineage, and the women themselves.) I have rekindled, as an offshoot of my devotional practices, an interest in reading about ballet history and some of these famous dancers. I go to ballet more frequently now, even slowly do some of the basic exercises that once formed so much the warp and weft of my existence. I talk about them when people ask, and I venerate them, making offerings and prayers just as I would with my spiritual or blood/adopted ancestors. I find they are very present when I paint so when I engage in creative activities, I often do so as a way of honoring them. My practice here is still growing and I think it was one of the things that led me to take up painting and photography, given that I can no longer dance (this was also a blessing from Oshun but I think there's a connection there). I'm in the process of redoing my shrine (I have a few recent images that I need to get framed, and I'm going to have all the little cards framed) so once that is done, I'll happily share an image of my shrine. It'll be a couple of weeks though. I just sent the first batch of images off to my framer. I haven't yet figured out how to honor the daemon of art…i know that I have to, even if simply in veneration and thanks for having fostered me, but that piece hasn't been given to me yet. I'm not worried. It will come and I think that developing a venerative practice for my artistic lineage is, perhaps a good start to that.

"No one sings as purely as those in deepest hell; what we take for the song of angels is their song." --Kafka

Tomorrow is Veterans Day and this particular day has immense personal import for me. My dad was career military and served in both WWII and Korea. My grandfather was in WWII and i have great uncles who served in WWI. Some of my first ancestors in the States were Hessian mercenaries who came over to fight in the Revolutionary war and I also carry in my veins the blood of Saxon warriors who took their stand against Charlemagne, may he be damned, in order to protect their traditions. I'm well aware, to the marrow of my soul, of the debt we owe our military dead. We all have them, somewhere in our lines, and I like to think that the grit and sense of duty that motivated them to fight for their homes, families, countries, and people flows through our ancestral hamingja down to us as well. I sense them quite often around me, the military dead in my line and those military dead that I honor who may or may not be directly related as well. I maintain a special part of my ancestor shrine solely for them and occasionally I make pilgrimages to battlefields and hold rituals and do what I can to honor them too. One thing that I've found they very much appreciate, in terms of offerings, is the acquisition of trench art.

This wasn't what i intended to write about for Veteran's Day and I may yet write something else before tomorrow ends. Still, someone today expressed great surprise that I, who carry warrior medicine, am also a poet, painter, photographer, glassblower, and cook. This is not the first time that I've had this happen. I remember when I was working with a Theod, jaws dropped open when it was discovered I could cook and cook well. The idea that someone claiming warrior medicine could also have the power, potential, skill, and desire to create something of beauty, or something nourishing seemed shocking. It apparently causes serious cognitive disconnect for some. Yet, warriors have always had a keen appreciation of beauty.

How could they not? Even in the midst of hell, one needs reminders of what one is fighting for; one needs reminders that nourish the eyes and the soul. One needs reminders that the brutality and horror in which one is currently wading are not the only things in the world, that there was a world, a precious beautiful world before whatever war one is fighting, a world to which one hopes to return. Warriors need those reminders of the fragility and sacredness of life, of their own humanity, of those they love, and those things that sustain. (All those humanities we're so hell bent on culling from our educational system? They nourish our humanity. They connect us to some of the best parts of being human: our capacity for occasional, shocking greatness, for creative genius, for distilling love, honor, loyalty, joy, pain, weariness, defeat, salvation into concrete talismans of remembrance, i.e. art, music, sculpture, etc. We cut them from our educational systems at our peril).

I think that our hunger for beauty and our ability to find or create it in the most adverse of circumstances is one of the defining sensibilities of being human. Warriors, soldiers are men and women making hard choices and doing what is necessary often with horrific personal consequences. This doesn't' make them less human; i believe it makes them all the more aware of how human they are, and all the more aware of how sometimes that must be thrust aside for survival, raw, brutal survival. Warriors have always sought out and found ways to create beauty in the midst of trauma. Samurai were expected to be well educated in the courtly arts and many a Japanese warrior was also an artist or poet. Archilochus, the Greek poet, wrote of being both a devotee of the Gods of war and of the Muses. There was no conflict: both were necessary for becoming a whole human being; and men damned to the trenches in WWI and WWII took the implements of destruction and horror: shells, mortars, and assorted metal refuse of war and made things of occasionally astonishing beauty. Collectors and antiquarians call this latter type of art 'trench art,' because it was made by men in the trenches.

I discovered trench art completely by accident. A friend of mine who used to own his own antique store gifted me with a small box. It was made out of a large shell casing and the soldier-artist had carefully inscribed a little lion and the words 'Labor Ipse Voluptas" (work itself is a pleasure) on the top. It was made during WWI. My military dead immediately took to it and it ended up on their altar. I started to get pushed to find more of this type of art and so over the past couple of years, I've acquired a small collection, all of which sits on my shrine to the military dead as an offering to them and what they endured.

I want to share some images of those pieces with you today, of simple things of quiet beauty made by men in the midst of hell.

This is the small box, my first piece of trench art, that I describe above. half the lid is hinged so it opens and closes easily.

The larger ring pictured here was made in France during WWI out of a shell casing.

These vases, both made during WWI, in France. One has ivy running around it, the other poppies. Both are made from very large shell casings--they're about a foot and a half tall.

I am particularly taken by the small things that soldiers made, like these cufflinks made out of small shell casings, and this pill box, made out of a shell casing and a coin. It's a little larger than a nickel.

Finally, here are two pictures of another box, also made out of a shell casing. This is about the size of my fist and is finely detailed. This is what many soldiers did in their "down" time and many's the sweetheart who received rings or trinkets from her beloved at the front. I believe these things served as a reminder of exactly what these men were fighting for: everything they loved at home. All too many of them never came back. May they have the grace of being remembered and hailed, not only tomorrow on Veterans Day, but always.

(the first photo at the beginning of this post is one that I took of the WWI memorial in Rhinebeck, NY. Please do not use without permission).

I love the Samhain season, october, autumn in general but with the beginning of november the excitement of the world bursting into color, of the days growing chill, of preparations for the feast of the dead turns into something darker and more somber. It's as though a very special threshold has been crossed. Everything seems to change. There's Veteran's Day which my House celebrates as we have strong reverence for the military dead. Odin of course, takes pride of place in many of my own November devotions, and House Sankofa honors Him in ritual; and always the press of my Lithuanian ancestors demanding that I tend my hearth properly, tend my mate, tend the people under my care, provide for them, ensuring that they will not go hungry through the winter. Their voices have been especially loud this autumn. The hearth is a sacred thing to my ancestors, a holy thing, and the home a sanctuary. They take this seriously, for to my Lithuanian ancestors so many of their women were fire priestesses, responsible for tending and maintaining the household and community relationship with the spirits of fire and as a corollary to that, maintaining the hearth in wholesome and pristine condition. It was an act of power for if the hearth of the home fails, then one's obligations to fire have been breached and if those relationships within each individual hearth are not correct the community will be weak and that leads to destruction. I listen to them. My Lithuanian ancestors held out against the encroachment of monotheism longer than *any* other European nation, including the Scandinavian lands, several hundred years longer, finally falling to monotheistic conquest in the middle of the fifteenth century. So the early days of November are odd for me. We celebrate day of the dead -- actually, we're a blended House and we celebrate several ancestral feast days at this time: Winternights, Samhain and from Oct. 31-Nov 2: Day of the dead. Usually I set up a full, lush ofrenda, though I did not do so this year. Then Nov. 1 is my dad's birthday. He died almost ten years ago, but I always try to do something for him on this date. Lately, with all their push toward keeping up the integrity of my household and home, my ancestors have been pushing me to cook traditional Lithuanian dishes. My biological mother wasn't lithuanian and really didn't cook any of the traditional foods. My dad, when he got a hankering for his preferred comfort food would put on an apron and make it himself -- the only time I ever saw a man in a kitchen growing up lol!. HIs favorite thing in the world was a type of fried cookie- a traditional Lithuanian concoction involving 12 egg yolks, a ton of sugar, flour, sour cream, and some rum. I don't know what they're called in Lithuanian but he called them 'bow ties.' I'll be making them tonight (a day late) for him. Veterans day always hits me hard and usually involves intense work with the dead, and then we head into those terrifyingly liminal days preceding Yule. It feels transformative this year, and it's hard not having any idea what those dark days when the Hunt rides furious and fast will bring. Today, four of us from the House had an impromptu gathering. One is a devotee of Hekate and wanted to share a ritual with us. It was lovely and tremendously powerful and more on this I will not say, only that this ritual and what preceded and followed it was tremendously healing for all of us. May She be hailed. Before I ramble on too much more about November and it's ritual obligations, I want to share a few photos marking this day. Here is a close up of the Hekate shrine. The mask belongs to one of my House members, and is his home image of Her. We are having an image made for us, but it's not yet completed. When it is, we will hold a ritual and our Hekate's man will install Her in the house. till then, I share this image.

This is a photo of my father John P. Dabravalskas during part of his military service. He was career military, serving first in WWII, then Korea, and then working at Aberdeen Proving Ground until his retirement. I'm not sure if this photo is korea or WWII, I'm guessing Korea just from his age (he was born in 1917) but I could be wrong. He did his best and did his duty. Through him I am descended from strong, fierce people, hard people who do not know the meaning of the word 'to yield.' From him i learned about duty and obligation, things that service me in my work; i learned to be a brutal chess player, and I got glimpses of the world outside the very narrow one in which I was raised. I did not know him well when he was alive. The generation gap was extreme (he was thirty years older than my bio-mom) but he was a good man who tried always to do his best. I'm proud to have him in my ancestral house.

And just because my Lithuanian ancestors are driving me batshit of late ^___^ (in all the best ways of course), here is a photo of my grandparents Ursula and Karl Dabravalskas, their daughter Julia, and my dad. I never knew my grandfather, but my grandmother, whom we called "mamoom" scared me when I was small. A birdlike woman who never quite got the hang of english, she always wanted to hug and hold me...and I was convinced she was Baba Yaga. I wish now that I'd gotten to know her better but she died when I was very small. All of them are honored on my ancestor shrine.

As an aside, my grandparents were the victims of an unfortunately mis-arranged marriage. heh. My grandfather contracted a betrothal with my grandma's older sister. Then he came to the states to make his fortune. Once he got set up, he sent for his bride to be. She, however, decided she didn't want to leave her native land and sent her younger sister instead...without telling him. In those days, one didn't just send the girl back so he married her, they had three children, and fought --or so i am told--like cats and dogs till the day he died. Here's a praise poem I wrote for my Lithuanian dead some time back. They do sustain.

Now, enough of my rambling. What did everyone do for their ancestors this past samhain?

Today House Sankofa held its Winternights /Samhain ritual: a huge feast to honor our collective dead. We came together as a community bringing pictures of our beloved dead, tokens, and many, many offerings. Together, we laid the altar that you see here and cooked together to make a feast for our dead, and also food for us to enjoy after the ritual.

We honored our personal dead, both of physical lineage and those heroes and friends, mentors of heart and spirit that inspire us. We honored the collective dead of House Sankofa, making sure to honor the ancestors of those who could not be present. We honored our polytheistic martyrs, those who fought the good fight trying to defend our ancestral traditions. We held space for and gave offerings to the collective dead not only our House but the Houses of our allies: House Thyrsatrae and Bet Ittoba'al. We honored the military dead, the Dionysian dead, the two-spirit dead, the Canaanite dead who were first to face attack by the Filter, and all those dead who had been rendered silent for generations but who wished to step up and help. We honored mitochondrial Eve and our most ancient Mothers and Fathers. We honored our personal dead, and my adopted mother, the sancta of our House. It was a good day, a good ritual, and our dead feasted well. Here are some photos of our altar before and after for y'all to enjoy.

Online Course - Ancestor Work 101: Getting Started Instructor: Galina Krasskova, krasskova@gmail.com Recommended Texts: "Weaving Memory" by Laura Patsouris, "Spiritual Protection" by Sophie Reicher Length of Course: 8 weeks: Dec. 4 through Jan. 22. Cost of Course: $125.00 I am going to be starting an eight week course in the basics of ancestor veneration: what it is, why we do it, how to get started and what problems might arise. This course is non-denominational (anyone may take it, you don't have to be Heathen) and open to everyone. Lessons will be sent around once a week via a private yahoogroup email. Each lesson will contain a "lecture", reading assignment, and homework. There will be a discussion group on yahoogroups for the duration of the class. There are ten spots available so if you're interested, please contact me as soon as possible to reserve your spot.

(Please feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested).

If you would like to show your support and appreciation for the work that I and House Sankofa are doing, there are several things you can do. 1. Buy my books. You can find a list of my current publications here: http://amzn.to/YtlrLq. This takes you to an amazon page listing my books.

2. Have me do a divination for you, or order a gift-certificate for a friend. 3. Have me write a prayer or series of Adorations for the Deity of your choice. I take commissions $15/prayer. Money goes toward offerings and shrine maintenance. 4. Buy something from my marketplace page. 5. Make a donation via paypal. I have an account at tamyris at earthlink.net. Thank you. *******Galina and her kindred donate quarterly to The Big Sur Land Trust. See the links page.